Such is Life: Mr. Congeniality

Wednesday

Apr 9, 2014 at 4:00 PM

I'm trying to figure out where we went wrong with our son.

Virginia Rea,Yreka

I’m trying to figure out where we went wrong with our son. Don’t get me wrong – he’s a wonderful young man, in spite of his upbringing with us – but he doesn’t seem to be able to get the hang of human interaction. Come to think of it, the fact that we raised him may have a lot to do with it.

This wasn’t clear to us for some reason until he went away to college. We were a bit surprised that he didn’t party every night, like most freshmen, but then, he had been the designated driver in high school, so we weren’t too terribly shocked at the lack of a social life. But he didn’t seem to have many friends, either, even after his first quarter.

All right, it’s true he was busy studying chemistry and physics, but surely he had some time to socialize? I will admit I was a bit disturbed when he called one Friday night (he is given to occasional telephone calls home wherein he will ask random questions that occur to him, such as, “Mom, is it really possible for someone to be paying $50,000 a month in child support?” Yes, dear, if you make $50 million a year, it is indeed possible, and even likely”; or, “Hey mom, what’s another word for a crypt? I think it has a lot of silent ph’s in it …” “Sarcophagus?” “No, I don’t think so.”

It turned out to be sepulcher, but really, what 19-year old asks these things, especially on a Friday night? Besides mine, I mean) to inquire indignantly, “Mom, do you have any idea how much lint collects in dryers? How come nobody ever cleans out the lint trap in a laundromat dryer?” Probably because, like him until that year, they’ve never even heard of a lint trap, much less been able to locate one on a dryer.

Slowly, the tales of his possibly genetic inability to communicate effectively began to emerge, mostly through his sister.

The first story we heard was “Toaster Girl.” This was an interaction in the cafeteria; apparently, a nice girl came up to our son and remarked that the toaster was really hot. He related that he looked at her, amazed at the inanity of her remark, replied, “Yeah, they tend to do that,” and walked away. He told us he realized 10 seconds after he said it that it had come out a lot harsher than he meant it to, but by then she was gone and he was too embarrassed to find her and apologize.

Next was “Breakfast Girl” (he never gets the chance to know them well enough to learn their names, for obvious reasons). Being antisocial, he always got to breakfast early in order to find the one table that seats only two people so he didn’t have to talk to anyone, but one time, a girl actually dared to sit down and engage him in conversation.

She was a lovely girl (we knew this because when we went down to visit him, he pointed her out, hissing, “Don’t look at her – no eye contact!”), but it seems never to have occurred to him to further the acquaintance by asking her name, even after she lingered in the hallway after breakfast; he was apparently struck by the idea after a friend of his pointed out she might have been waiting for him to ask her out, but she was long gone by then of course.

He told me later that he met her at the cafeteria entrance and she “sort of forced” him to take her phone number. What would he do if he didn’t like her?

Then came “The Vampire Incident.” He explained that he liked to get to class before anyone else and sit up in a far corner by himself, listening to music on his I-Pod. One day a girl came in, noticed him in his aerie, and asked helpfully if he would like her to turn on the light, to which he replied forcefully, if not tactfully, “No! I prefer the darkness …” She apparently immediately vacated the area, never to be seen again. Will I ever have grandchildren?

The last event was when a girl from his dorm, a very nice girl, he says, knocked on his door and asked if he wanted to go to lunch with her. In the middle of an exciting part of his book and anxious, he says, to finish the chapter, he replied, “No,” and shut the door in her face, immediately thereafter realizing his response may not have been calculated to make him voted “Mr. Congeniality” on campus.

Perhaps I should create a dating service for nice young men with no social skills, and sign up my son as my first customer. He’s going on to graduate school next year, so I continue to hope that I may someday be a grandmother.